Daring a Childlike Writing: Children for Philosophy, Moral End, and the Childhood of Conceptions

Abstract

every time, because life loves to be reborn and thus is nourished by childhood. Childhood in life and childlike life: that is why starting is a way to keep childhood alive and give it life. Perhaps this is also why we celebrate, with such joy, powerful and exuberant beginnings in the adult world-as when a child is born or a childish idea arises.A child arrives as a new world because in her and with her we feel that the whole world can start over. But that is not the only reason. A child also arrives as a new world because her arrival tells us what, being so simple, we had almost forgotten: that the world is not just old and unquestionable. The child doesn't let us be indifferent; she breaks with conformity and arrives as hope, reeking of the unpredictable. Of questions.A similar arrival to that of a child is that of certain childlike ideas, such as the idea offered by Matthew Lipman when he created "philosophy for children." We celebrate his childlike, daring, irreverent, inquiring character, commemorating his birth nearly 50 years ago. With this childlike idea, a new world began-or at least it became possible to start-in worlds which were already a little old and stuck in conformity. When those in institutionalized philosophy and education heard about the audacity of welcoming children among their reputable interlocutors in dialogue and thought, they frowned and turned up their noses. Philosophy for children? How come? Childhood in philosophy?Even if they enjoyed and studied childhood, the worlds of philosophy and education were (were they?) still reticent toward it. In those worlds, childhood was (was it?) often like "an aberrant and useless time that adults abbreviated at all costs, a decline or even an illness" (Hugo Mãe 2020, pp. 15, 49, 57). Perhaps philosophy and education-very adult-have realized this beginning, with great difficulty and disturbance. But Matthew Lipman, Ann Sharp, and all the collaborators in this endeavor dared to start something different. Nowadays we can celebrate a childlike beginning that opened a space for many other beginnings in worlds inhabited by philosophically educating lives.We start over, though, whenever we can: in every piece of writing, in every thought, in every encounter with children of all ages. For the reasons mentioned, as adulthood takes over our bodies, it is not so easy to start... to start seriously, to really start. In other words, it is no longer so simple for us to start without pretending, without simulating: to really start, to start by starting something new (even if only for ourselves) in the world. To have a beginning, it is not enough to go back to a routine or to repeat a movement. There must be anomalies, abnormalities, the unforeseen, the unthinking. A dizzying movement. This is all perhaps more symptomatic of that age when we are no longer children. The beginning is there, inviting us, waiting to happen, but it is as if we don't feel the need. Or we start without even realizing that we are starting.Despite this, we-the adult authors of this text-try...